The proposed pilot study is designed to investigate the causes of demographic and economic change, between 1960 and 1970, in small cities located in the South Atlantic and East South Central census divisions. The approach adopted in this research is interdisciplinary, combining the approaches and methods of both sociology and economics. More specifically, research objectives include the development of a typology of small cities; analysis of the antecedents and causes of community change in selected economic and demographic variables within the city typology; construction of path-analytic models to determine causal links between 1960 and 1970 community characteristics through the medium of net migration and economic change. Justification for this research is threefold: first, the contribution to the paucity of findings in urban-related literature on small city growth; second, the investigation of demographic and economic change, rather than merely growth; third, the implications of the findings for policy formulations addressing the question of stimulating small city growth.